Judge Philip Hughes, sitting at Mold Crown Court, told him he could easily have killed the officer.

Sears was jailed for 11 months, banned from driving for two years and ordered to take an extended re-test.

Sears, of Flint, but who at the time was living at a bail hostel in Bangor, was driving a car he had just bought despite the fact that he was disqualified from driving.

PC Ross Andrew Tutton stood in the middle of Woodfield Avenue in Flint one night in January and put up his hand in an official “halt” sign.

But prosecutor Gareth Preston told how the officer instantly realised the defendant was accelerating towards him when he heard the engine roar and the front of the car lift.

“The driver steered towards PC Tutton who had to jump out of the way to avoid being struck,” Mr Preston explained.

The officer aimed his extendable baton at the windscreen but it was an indication of the speed of the car that he actually struck the rear windscreen.

Sears was stopped a short distance away by other officers called to the scene who were able to block his path with a police car.

The officer later candidly admitted that the experience had made him nervous of stopping cars in such a way, it had affected his sleep and his family had become concerned about what had happened to him in work that day.

Judge Hughes told Sears: “When you saw the officer you quite deliberately drove at him and he had to leap out of the way to avoid being hit.

“He was badly shaken and you no doubt realise that you could easily have killed him.”

It had been a short but quite deliberate course of dangerous driving.

“The fact that he was a police officer simply doing his duty makes the matter worse. Police officers are entitled to be protected by the courts against people like you who behave in this way,” Judge Hughes told him.

Myles Wilson, defending, said that his client had a bad record for driving offences but no convictions for dangerous driving.

The defendant had spent most of the last few years in custody and had been recalled to prison because he was on early release licence from a previous sentence at the time.

When stopped, Sears had fully co-operated, got out of the car and lay on the ground as instructed and had been handcuffed.